Hello everyone. Today I wanted to share the next several reviews I will be doing this fall: 

Go: Returning Discipleship to the Front Lines of Faith
​by Preston Sprinkle

Mattie's Pledge (Journey to Pleasant Prairie #2)
​by Jan Drexler 

Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood
by Lance Ford, Brad Brisco

Hope Prevails: Insights from a Doctor's Personal Journey Through Depression
by Michelle Bengtson 

365 Pocket Morning Prayers: Strength and Joy to Begin Each Day
by David R. Veerman, The Barton-Veerman Co (Producer)

​A Heart Most Certain
By: Melissa Jagears

The Devoted (The Bishop's Family #3)
by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Good luck to everyone taking the ACT! 

 All that infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him....

(I cut out a few words here)

“So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?” he asked her.

Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.

“What should I be without God?” she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.

“Ah, so that is it!” he thought.

“And what does God do for you?” he asked, probing her further.

Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak chest kept heaving with emotion.

“Be silent! Don’t ask! You don’t deserve!” she cried suddenly, looking sternly and wrathfully at him.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he repeated to himself.

“He does everything,” she whispered quickly, looking down again.

“That’s the way out! That’s the explanation,” he decided, scrutinising her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost morbid feeling. He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that little body still shaking with indignation and anger- and it all seemed to him more and more strange, almost impossible. “She is a religious maniac!” he repeated to himself.

There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it every time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked at it. It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was bound in leather, old and worn.

​“Where did you get that?” he called to her across the room.

She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.

“It was brought me,” she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking at him.

​“Who brought it?” “Lizaveta, I asked her for it.”

​  “Lizaveta! strange!” he thought.

​ Everything about Sonia seemed to him stranger and more wonderful every moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over the pages.

​ “Where is the story of Lazarus?” he asked suddenly.

​ Sonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was standing sideways to the table. “Where is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia.”

​ She stole a glance at him.

​  “You are not looking in the right place.... It’s in the fourth gospel,” she whispered sternly, without looking at him.

​ “Find it and read it to me,” he said. He sat down with his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly, prepared to listen.

​ “In three weeks’ time they’ll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be there if I am not in a worse place,” he muttered to himself.

​  Sonia heard Raskolnikov’s request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly to the table. She took the book however.

​ “Haven’t you read it?” she asked, looking up at him across the table.

​ Her voice became sterner and sterner.

​ “Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!”

​  “And haven’t you heard it in church?”

​ “I... haven’t been. Do you often go?

​ ” “N-no,” whispered Sonia.

​ Raskolnikov smiled.

​(I cut out a few words here)

 “Were you friends with Lizaveta?”

​  “Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she couldn’t.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see God.”

​  The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new again: the mysterious meetings with Lizaveta and both of them- religious maniacs.

​ “I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!” “Read!” he cried irritably and insistently.

​ Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the “unhappy lunatic.”

​ “What for? You don’t believe?...” she whispered softly and as it were breathlessly.

​ “Read! I want you to,” he persisted. “You used to read to Lizaveta.” Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the first syllable.

​ “Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany...” she forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.

​ Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went on to the nineteenth verse:

​ “And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee...."

​ Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would quiver and break again. “Jesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto Him," (And drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as though she were making a public confession of faith.) “Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which should come into the world.”

​ She stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself went on reading. Raskolnikov sat without moving, his elbows on the table and his eyes turned away. She read to the thirty-second verse.

​ “Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, behold how He loved him! And some of them said, could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?"

​ Raskolnikov turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known it! She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it. She was getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she was reading by heart. At the last verse “Could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind...” dropping her voice she passionately reproduced the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving Jews, who in another moment would fall at His feet as though struck by thunder, sobbing and believing.... “And he, he- too, is blinded and unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At once, now,” was what she was dreaming, and she was quivering with happy anticipation.

​ “Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days."

​ She laid emphasis on the word four.

​ ​“Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth." (She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were seeing it before her eyes.)

​ “Bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things which Jesus did believed on Him."

​  She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair quickly.

​ “That is all about the raising of Lazarus,” she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.

Title: The Road We Traveled
Author: Jane Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: Sept. 6, 2016
Publisher: Revell
Provided by: Revell
Subjects: Pioneers, Hardship, Uncertainty, Hunger. 
Setting: Oregon Trail, 1845
Rating: 3/5
Pages: 340
Cost: $15
Amazon Link
Author Page

Synopsis: 

When Tabitha Brown's son makes the fateful decision to leave Missouri and strike out for Oregon, she refuses to be left behind. Despite her son's concerns, Tabitha hires her own wagon to join the party. Along with her reluctant daughter and her ever-hopeful granddaughter, the intrepid Tabitha has her misgivings. But family ties are stronger than fear. 

The trials they face along the way will severely test Tabitha's faith, courage, and ability to hope. With her family's survival on the line, she must make the ultimate sacrifice, plunging deeper into the wilderness to seek aid. What she couldn't know was how this frightening journey would impact how she understood her own life--and the greater part she had to play in history. 

With her signature attention to detail and epic style, New York Times bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick invites readers to travel the deadly and enticing Oregon Trail. Based on actual events, This Road We Traveled will inspire the pioneer in all of us.

My opinions

The way that the author writes is very interesting. Most times, characters are introduced plainly and in a way that shares several significant details. However, in this book, it seems like characters are introduced more haphazardly... They are creating plans for moving west, yet we will meet someone and they are washing their hair or untangling a necklace. Its more uncensored, if that makes sense. 

Strong points:

Its very very interesting to have a main character who is 65. There are several characters who could be considered main characters, however Tabby stands out the most to me. 

Often in historical fiction, the main character is 18-25 so this is very original and I think I like it :)

Also, there is a nice vocabulary in this book. I have seen several new words:

• flummox
• foible
• somnolent
• gramo
• indomitable
• glebe
• etc. 

Its neat and some of the phrases are time-period related so thats cool, sayings we dont use anymore like "a fly in the butter"

I think if I was to pinpoint my favorite scene, it would be about 2/3 of the way through when everyone is freaking out to begin with and then they run into a wild animal. Its a crazy scene!

Weak points:

In the beginning you are introduced to many, many characters. I almost wanted some sort of character chart or map to figure out who belonged to who and lived where. The book does include a "Cast List" however I was still very lost in the beginning. 

For example, on page 28 there is a piece that reads: 

"In the next room she could hear her brothers Albro, Octavius, and Clark's low voices, and a wistfullness to share anticipation with ached in her chest... her grandmother had distinguished her three children with singularity: Orus, Manthano, Pherne. And her parents had continued the tradition despite Pringle being a distinctive surname in itself. Virgilia? For her father, she knew, but still. Why not Virginia?"

Its almost chaotic, unless its just me.  A few chapters in I finally understood more of what was going on, however the beginning was a bit hard to follow. 

Also, the book doesnt seem to have a religious focus at all. I was under the impression that the book was Christian fiction however it doesnt seem to be explicitly included. The main character's husband was a preacher but religious references are few and far between.

EDIT: There is religion there, especially and the end of the book. 

In the end, I think the author does a good job of connecting with the audience through the book. I never got into it but it didnt have errors or anything either.  

To me, the target audience seems to be older women, who would connect with Tabby but many readers would like it. 

Being about the Oregon Trail, its not exactly inspirational and people considering to purchase the book for someone else should keep that in mind. For example, there is a Donner party reference. 

You can order a copy from Amazon here.  

About the author

Jane Kirkpatrick is the New York Times and CBA bestselling author of nearly 30 books, including A Light in the Wilderness, The Memory Weaver, and A Sweetness to the Soul, which won the prestigious Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Center. She is also the winner of the WILLA Literary Award and the Carol Award for Historical Fiction. Jane lives in Central Oregon with her husband, Jerry. Learn more at http://jkbooks.com